February 27, 2020 - Thursday Bibe Study - Accepting Creation from the Dust of Eden

The memory of Ash Wednesday's dust and ash on my forehead was still fresh. I was remembering who and whose I am as I attended Creator's Bible Study on Thursday morning, Bill, Patsy, Janet, Pastor Ray and I were studying the upcoming Sunday scriptural readings - Matthew's account of Jesus Being Tempted as the Gospel text and the Genesis story of Adam and Eve Being Tempted as the First Reading for worship.

Lectio Divina readings concentrated our attention on these particular Biblical passages. The first two times reading highlighted certain words, and then phrases but the third time reading the Genesis passages surprised me with a fresh perspective. My discipline around Lent and thinking about God's relationship with the truth was on my mind and I considered the truth of both God's and the serpent's words as recorded.

Evaluating the truth from the Enlightenment's "fact fundamentalism" perspective (as mentioned in the Transfiguration Sunday blog), these verses move from fairly straight-forward exchanges to containing a truth journey where assumptions we often make can become apparent.

From a superficial first read God's words are simply not true and the serpent basically describes what eventually will happen under the tree. Adam and Eve do not die when they eat the fruit. Yet there is a deeper way to look at this passage.

In order for them to disobey God's commandment "do not to eat of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil" they need to understand both God's command and what the consequence will be for trusting wisdom outside God's provision. Otherwise the consequence in the command cannot be an effective deterrent.

Eve and Adam need to understand what many of us collectively affirmed yesterday. Humankind has dusty roots and there is an inevitable return to dust.. Yet, unless Adam and Eve were immortal before eating the fruit, God's consequence must have been meaningless to them.  And if that is true they lose their humanity and we have no true connection to them. Immortality is a consequence humankind shares

Perhaps something else changed in this story. Instead of death, their eyes were open and they gained the understanding that, eventually, they would die. Here the serpent does tell them "For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”. This again all appears to be true with the exception of the dubious "you will be like God".

Maybe the impossibility of immortality to exist was finally replaced in us with a nature to think we could provide for ourselves and make moral decisions using a wisdom outside of God's provision. Maybe Ash Wednesday and Lent can sometimes be about helping us open our eyes again and occasionally allow us to see that we may still be created from that dust of Eden that we share.

Given where I am in my life right now, this is a journey I intend to follow as best I can during this upcoming season.